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If I Was Forced to Eat at Just Salad, They Now Have Something I Can Order

You know how I feel about salads… and I’m equally turned off by antiseptic Midtown chains. So naturally places like Chop’t and Just Salads (who are merely co-opting the salad portion of the generic Midtown deli) don’t rank high on my list of places to eat. However, occasionally they will do something that piques my interest. Lure me in with something unhealthy… or Asian… or both! (Like the General Tso’s salad dressing at Chop’t.) Clearly Just Salad has taken notice, because they sent me this interesting email the other day:

Hi Zach, Hope all is well. We met a couple years back shortly after our first location opened at 320 Park Ave (We didn’t want you to take pics in store after NY Mag article). I read Midtown Lunch often so I know you are not a big fan of salads. That being said, we just recently unveiled some new menu changes that you may be interested in. These items include:

Ok, so I’m admit it… I love Chinese crunchy noodles. In wonton soup, eaten plain, whatever. They’re one of the few redeeming qualities of a salad bar. And I also love wraps (at their best they’re like non-Mexican burritos), and in theory a Spicy thai peanut dressing could be tasty… right? So without bothering to consider the irony of a place called Just Salad serving wraps, I actually decided to try this thing.

I do occasionally feel the need to eat fresh veggies, so I figure if I’m going to do it they might as well be smothered in peanut sauce and paired with crunchy fried Chinese noodles. The thing was unremarkable, in that’s it’s pretty simply the sum of all it’s parts. White meat salad bar chicken, lettuce, shredded carrots, and celery. They chop the whole thing up for you, but thankfully the Chinese noodles still retain their crunch. And the peanut sauce dressing had a surprising kick. Not bad at all.

Would I go out of my way for this thing? Hells no. But I understand that some of you have co-workers who like to eat at places like this. And maybe you’re single, and want to mingle. In other words, if I was forced (by circumstances beyond my control) to eat at a place like Just Salad, I can take solace in knowing that there is something there I wouldn’t mind eating. And with me, that is the biggest victory Just Salad could hope to achieve.

10 Comments

well, they should change their name to Just Salad and then some or something like that. =p
my asian girl friends always make fun of our white friends for eating salad for lunch. no asian girl i know eat salad for lunch or consider it a meal.

All these salads are too small for me. Aren’t there any places that serve a meal of a salad? Like a BIG salad? Something that’s served in a bowl big enough to baptize your first born in. Any meal salads for a hungry Texan at a reasonable cost? Besides the never ending salad and soup from the Olive Garden.

They already have ranch dressing. I don’t really like to double dip the ranch and blue cheese when I am eating wings. I consider it a bastardization of the condiments. Cheddar seems like a good choice of cheese to me. But I would rather opt for the real blue cheese on that thing without ranch dressing any day.

I just had the Buffalo Chicken Wrap from Just Salads. I swapped out the cheddar and added crubled blue cheese (they charged me .25 extra to do this). I was a decent size wrap, but it tasted like NOTHING. Zero “buffalo” taste, zero chicken taste, just about zero blue cheese taste. What a disappointment. How does this place stay in business turning out such inferior food?